Start-up of the Month July: OctoGEO

July 2018

MapTiler: An Open Alternative to Google Maps

MapTiler Cloud is the first commercial application of OpenMapTiles Satellite, the award-winning project of the 2017 Copernicus Masters T-Systems Open Telekom Cloud Challenge, a project by the current Copernicus Accelerator mentee Petr Pridal and his start-up OctoGEO s.r.o.

From Boy Scouts to a Pioneering Earth Observation Start-up

Before founding a start-up and entering the Earth observation (EO) sector, the team studied together in Brno, Czech Republic. The founders, Petr Pridal and Vaclav Klusak, led a team of Boy Scouts in the past, long before remote sensing became a part of their daily lives. Today, the team, including 10 more colleagues, does coding sprints and further active sessions – often linked with some leisure activity together – such as hiking or skiing (e.g. the jumping photo in the mountains was taken during one of these sessions).

MapTiler: A Team Achievement

During another one-week session, the team worked on the new MapTiler website, which is just launching now, and also decided on the final name of the brand. MapTiler is an affordable alternative to Google Maps, providing detailed online world maps enriched by satellite imagery and elevation data with a possibility to host individual map products by users. The satellite imagery is provided by Copernicus Sentinel-2 data. After the pilot phase with open data provided by Copernicus, ESA and NASA, the team behind OctoGEO is now expanding the project with high-res aerial imagery of the USA and Western Europe. The result, a seamless world satellite map, will be available as part of the MapTiler project.

Maps under your Control

Apart from standard maps, the MapTiler Cloud offers full customisation. Users can change the map colour, add or remove map data, upload their own geo data prepared by third-party software or change the map labels language. There are currently more than 50 languages supported, including all official European languages. The whole project runs on a reliable highly-available global infrastructure with two main data centres in Europe and North America and on over 110 caching servers in content delivery networks (CDN) all over the planet. The hardware purchase was supported by OVH, one of the world’s largest web and cloud hosting providers, and its start-up programme, Digital Launch Pad (DLP). In its short history, MapTiler Cloud has already attracted several important customers including IBM, Swiss Railways, Bosch, Fraunhofer IWU and recently also Starbucks, Pizza Hut and KFC in Europe.

For customers preferring a self-hosting option, the start-up offers the OpenMapTiles Server, easy-to-use software that can create world maps in less than 10 minutes. The whole stack can run on-premise, even behind a firewall or completely offline.

Further projects by OctoGEO

The start-up team at OctoGEO s.r.o. specialises in applying scientific research into geo industry. Apart from the OpenMapTiles Satellite, which is currently being combined with detailed aerial photos from the EU INSPIRE programme, the team has also developed other high-tech products such as a unique colour toning algorithm and a globally cleaned elevation dataset.

The success resulting from their Copernicus Masters participation in 2017 and their continuous achievements during the Copernicus Accelerator coaching prompted the team to apply for the ESA Business Incubation Centre (BIC) in Brno, the brand new branch of the ESA BIC Prague in the Czech Republic, and the team is set to attend TechCrunch in San Francisco this September.

Users are invited to try OctoGEO’s products by starting with a free version to use our basic maps or host their own Earth observation data at www.maptiler.com.

Words from the Mentor

“You always thought that maps are available for free? Maybe for a simple personal use, but even for small businesses, the costs are pretty high! The MapTiler project offers a solution for everyone who is in need of maps for commercial use – for very little money and in a very practical format. Users can obtain global coverage maps on a single USB stick or use a cloud-hosted version of the maps, work with different layers and integrate the maps into the user’s specific solution. What I really appreciate about my mentee’s project is that the maps are easy to use, fully customisable and there are new layers coming, so it’s getting better and better while the whole solution is light and flexible. I enjoy working with the team, who are completely behind the MapTiler project. I am convinced that these guys have a bright future!.”